How good is the reporting inside your organization?  Before answering that, consider the following:   Do you have the right information when you need it?  Do events occur inside the organization that require custom reports / queries and analysis? Seriously, it’s a rhetorical question, this probably happens almost all the time in many organizations.  The…

  As we alluded to last week in our intro to zero-base budgeting, there are many other lessons and potential pitfalls to keep in mind as you go through this process.   What can you learn from this type of exercise?  The odds are, a tremendous amount regarding the organization in question.  Below are some…

Last week in discussing overhead allocation in conjunction with quoting new business, I promised an article on zero-base budgeting.  Not to keep people waiting, here goes.   What is zero-base budgeting?  In layman’s terms, it involves budgeting by rebuilding an organization on a piece-by-piece basis.  It starts by proverbially dragging everything out into the parking…

Quoting new business is pretty straightforward, all you need to do is make sure the quoted price is greater than the costs and the new job should translate to a profit (in theory).  The trick is making sure the costs being contemplated are indeed the right costs.  If you are a distributor, most of your…